Deepfake ‘Nudify’ Technology Is Growing Darker and More Dangerous, Experts Warn
In recent years, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have revolutionized many fields, but they have also ushered in dangerous new risks. Among the most alarming developments is the rise of “deepfake nudify” technology—AI tools that can digitally strip clothing or insert people into explicit sexual videos with alarming realism. According to a comprehensive report by WIRED, this growing ecosystem of sexual deepfake services is increasingly sophisticated, easy to access, and causing profound harm to millions of women and girls worldwide.
The Escalating Threat of Sexual Deepfakes
A disturbing example highlighted in the report is a website that allows users to transform a single photo into an eight-second explicit video. With just a few clicks and a small fee, individuals can generate graphic, realistic sexual depictions of women—often without their consent. The site offers some 65 video “templates,” ranging from undressing sequences to highly explicit scenes with suggestive titles, and charges extra for AI-generated audio to accompany the visuals.
While the website in question remains unnamed to avoid further spreading the content, its mere existence underscores the widespread availability of such technology. Despite warnings urging users to upload only photos they have consent to modify, it is unclear what measures are in place to prevent misuse or verify consent. This raises significant concerns about the potential for nonconsensual sexual abuse and harassment.
The Expanding Deepfake Ecosystem
The sexual deepfake industry is far from limited to one website. It comprises dozens of services, bots, and apps, many deployed on popular platforms such as Telegram. Over 1.4 million users reportedly signed up to 39 deepfake creation channels and bots on Telegram alone, prompting the platform to remove at least 32 such tools after being alerted by researchers.
These services have evolved rapidly, increasingly offering highly realistic video generation requiring only a single photo as input. They enable users not just to “undress” individuals, but to create videos featuring a wide array of poses, sexual positions, and other customizable details. Some tools even allow users to generate fantasy versions, such as making subjects appear pregnant.
Experts tracking these trends emphasize that sexual deepfake creation has become industrialized and normalized, transforming digital sexual harassment into a widespread societal issue. According to Henry Ajder, a deepfake expert who has monitored the technology for over five years, the sophistication and functional range of these services have markedly increased. The combined revenues of this burgeoning industry likely reach millions of dollars annually.
Impacts on Victims and Society
Nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII), including deepfakes, overwhelmingly victimizes women and girls, inflicting severe psychological and social harms such as harassment, humiliation, and dehumanization. Explicit deepfakes have targeted public figures, celebrities, and politicians but are also used by individuals in private contexts to abuse colleagues, friends, and classmates.
Academic research highlights multiple motivations behind creating sexual deepfakes—including sextortion, inflicting harm, peer reinforcement, and simple curiosity about AI capabilities. However, many perpetrators appear to minimize or disregard the real harm their actions cause. Some develop a sense of power or control from producing such content, contributing to a culture that normalizes sexual violence online.
Pani Farvid, founder of The SexTech Lab at The New School, notes the broader societal context: violence against women, in all its forms, is often insufficiently taken seriously. This contributes to the persistence and growth of sexual deepfake abuse.
Technology, Economics, and the Lack of Legal Protections
Many of the deepfake tools are built on open-source AI models, which are then adapted and commercialized without adequate safeguards or governance. Some dominant deepfake websites have consolidated their market positions by acquiring smaller services, creating infrastructure that enables new platforms to rapidly emerge.
Despite the scale and severity of the problem, legal protections against nonconsensual deepfake pornography remain inadequate or slow to be implemented in many jurisdictions. Platforms frequently struggle to keep up with enforcement, as new tools and content proliferate quickly.
Telegram, which has removed millions of policy-violating pieces of content, states that nonconsensual pornography and related tools are prohibited by its terms of service. However, the persistence of these services online illustrates the challenge of eradicating sexual deepfake content while balancing freedom of speech and technology innovation.
Conclusion
The emergence of deepfake nudify technology represents a dark and troubling facet of the AI revolution. It has transformed digital sexual abuse, making it more easily accessible, more realistic, and more damaging than ever before. Addressing this crisis requires coordinated efforts in technological safeguards, legal reform, platform moderation, and societal awareness to protect victims and curtail the exploitation enabled by these tools.
As AI continues to evolve, experts warn that without effective intervention, sexual deepfake abuse will remain a pervasive and worsening scourge—one that disproportionately targets the most vulnerable members of society.
